The new SFU undergraduate curriculum, which will be implemented September
1st, 2006, will require all students to take at least two
"Quantitative" and "Writing Intensive" courses. This requirement
provides opportunity for us to introduce new, "non-traditional"
mathematics courses. This talk will review courses currently under
development, and show how we are hoping to make use of this
opportunity.

This year's meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group
included a working group on discrete mathematics in school curricula
co-chaired by Leo Jonker and myself. This presentation will report on
the deliberations of that working group. In particular, we will
address what is currently happening across the country, and how and
why the current situation might be changed.

Mathematics did not emerge ex nihilo. It is a human endeavour
that is motivated either by need (utility) or beauty (aesthetics).
Awareness of mathematics as such will help to make it more meaningful
and accessible to everyone in general, but to Liberal Arts students in
particular. As such, we have developed two courses at SFU (Educ 211,
Educ 212) that are specifically designed to increase the mathematical
literacy, quantitative reasoning, and deductive argumentation of
Liberal Arts students. In these courses, mathematics is presented as
a meaningful and accessible human activity situated in relevant
historical and cultural contexts. These courses focus on the
aesthetics and utility of mathematical experience, emphasising the
human experience of learning and doing mathematics. Though
mathematical topics comprise the course content, the approach is
deliberately and consciously pedagogical in orientation, drawing on
knowledge and practices from education. Students focus on problem
solving, participatory investigations and collaborative projects,
rather than applying the standard lecture/tutorial format typical of
most undergraduate mathematics courses.

Undergraduate courses in the history of mathematics are becoming more
popular all over Canada and the US, as mathematics educators see the
need to show their students the connections between human creativity
and the discipline. Student response to our first offering of a
course in the history of mathematics surprised everyone involved. The
students' enthusiasm, curiousity, hard work and creativity made for a
highly memorable semester-and create hope for the future, as many of
these students plan to teach mathematics themselves. Our course is
designed for students with considerable background in mathematics:
could more people be encouraged to get involved in mathematics through
the offering of history of mathematics courses at lower levels? Which
successful elements of our course might work in such courses?

We live in a society pervaded by math anxiety and weak mathematical
skills. Courses like Mathematics for Liberal Arts offer us an
opportunity to address these issues and reach out to a wider audience,
but how do we meet the challenges that arise? In particular, how do
we overcome anxiety, instil confidence and competency, and move beyond
this to awaken a deeper appreciation of Mathematics, and the role it
plays in our lives?

In this talk we will describe a couple of web sites produced by the
author that have proved popular with teachers of mathematics at the
secondary school and college levels for the teaching of various topics
in discrete mathematics. The "Combinatorial Object Server" (COS)
will produce exhaustive lists of discrete structures such as
permutations, combinations, trees, solutions to pentomino puzzles, and
so on, based on user-supplied input parameters. The "Amazing
Mathematical Object Server" is similar but more oriented to younger
students. We will describe the philosophy, capabilities, and
underlying technology of these web sites.

It is often the case that math enrichment takes place in urban
centres. Each year the University of Regina hosts a full-day event
called "Math Camp", which is open to any students from grades 7 to
12 that wish to participate. Students get to experience math in a
fun, low-stakes setting with a group of highly motivated and informed
pre-service teachers. We set out to overcome the distance barrier
that prevents students from schools outside of the greater Regina area
from participating by initiating "Math on the Move", a mobilized
version of the math camp. In this talk, we will discuss the methods
used and outcomes achieved on our first outing to a school at Carry
the Kettle, a First Nations community 100 km east of Regina.